There are lots of brilliant videos on YouTube for children, but there’s also a lot of stuff that’s… not so child-friendly. And that’s one good reason never to leave young children alone with YouTube open in a web browser or on a device.
One minute they’re looking at cuddly animal vids, and the next they’re watching a cuddly animal get its throat ripped out by a lion. Or worse.
Maybe apps can help. Cakey, for example, which aims to turn YouTube into a parent-managed feed of child-friendly videos on iPhone and iPad. And that’s managed by lots of parents, not just you.
“Parents have complete control over which videos children have access to. Children feel empowered being able to navigate themselves back and forth between different video collections without asking for help or permission from their parents,” explains its App Store listing.
“Parents have the ability to add ANY video from YouTube, not just from a restricted set of videos. Parents are able to build child-safe collections of videos and share them with the Cakey community for other parents to use.”
What that means is that whatever your child’s current interest – from animals to chess to gymnastics – someone in the Cakey community (or “Village” as it’s known) will hopefully have curated a collection of videos for it. And if they haven’t, you can dive in and do it yourself, or simply stick to moderating a feed of videos that you’re happy for your child to watch.
It’s a nice idea, and the collections angle means you don’t have to spend lots of time setting it up before using it, if you don’t want to. But having narrowly avoided a Nicki Minaj Anaconda Video Moment with our five year-old recently, we can see the value in sitting down and putting in the moderation time too.
Cakey is a free download for iPhone and iPad on Apple’s App Store, with no ads and no in-app purchases. And there’s an interesting story behind the app, which is the work of James Hong – who co-founded Hot or Not back in the day.
He’s blogged about his reasoning behind developing the app, and his future plans. “Coming soon, there will be a way for you to build a “circle of trust” with other users. When someone you trust (e.g. a friend, mother’s group, etc) creates or downloads a collection for their own kids, you can have Cakey notify you or even automatically download it to your device,” he wrote.
As for how the app makes money, it seems that’s not on the agenda for now. “I am building Cakey simply because I am a fellow concerned parent. If the Village gets large and costs skyrocket, I’ll look for ways to support its costs that are respectful, make the app better, and would only impact children in a positive way.”